“I'm trying to stay calm and positive and not worry too much,” she said. “I'm looking for updates and would love to hear his voice.”

Relief was given. Parks was part of the first group that got rescued. Posekany said he got hurt, but nothing seemed to be broken. She added he's got a year of experience under his belt, and has trained for emergency situations like this.

But one climber fell to his death. He has not yet been identified.

However, icy conditions near the summit can break the most experienced climbers.

“That's the world of mountaineering. You can do everything right and you can still take a fall, and that's the scary thing,” said Sarah Bradham, a spokesperson for Mazamas, a nonprofit mountaineer education organization.

Bradham is an experienced climber. She called the rescue textbook, and the fall the climber took hard to survive. She said helicopters that can make those lift rescues are stationed in Salem. Rescue crews made it up the mountain in about three hours, which she said, was “pretty fast.”

“The idea that you can fall and have a helicopter on scene and be plucked off within 30 minutes, even an hour, is not realistic in the environment we had,” she said. “We have no idea what happened, but I think we can all picture ourselves in that circumstance.”

She said the best way to protect yourself is to pay attention to the conditions and know when to turn back.